Combat Demo Suggestions

[Voideka]

I've been playing the combat demo for awhile and I've noticed a few things so far. T

You are unable to have survivors watch empty spaces. This might be important for watching doorways, to make sure no one sneaks in.

There's no way to see survivor's names, even though they are used in the log. You should (and probably already planned to) change that.

You can't switch someone who is already aiming but has no targets to be an observer without first choosing a new target. Right clicking should be consistent in it's behavior.

Increase accuracy at point blank range. In most of my games the last zombie left is one who was directly adjacent to a survivor.

I don't remember if this has been mentioned, but survivors don't seem change their aim after their target goes down, leading to lots of stray bullets and major friendly fire (it almost seems like the survivors may even intentionally be shooting at the friendly in the cone).

When all targets in a cone are dead, the survivor keeps his weapon equipped and doesn't change modes. I think some sort of visual indicator should be added for a survivor with no targets.


I'd like to note that I can consistently clear the room of zombies every time, usually with little to no movement involved, and often with a full stam bar left. I don't know where on the difficulty curve this is supposed to lie, but I just figured I'd mention it.

I'm still playing so there may be more to come.

[LoganB]

Hey Voideka,

Thanks for the feedback. Also glad you're able to get it working!

I should first mention that I haven't tried to balance anything like weapon damage, accuracy or stamina. The values in the game at the moment are fairly raw. I'll push out tweaks as time goes by. Sufficed to say, I'm not surprised you're able to clear the room easily.

Regarding friendly fire. Survivors shoot in bursts based on their experience level, with unexperienced survivors unloading everything they have and experienced ones firing a shot at a time. At the moment their experience level is a notch or two above "newbie", so a survivor with an SMG will fire a 4-round burst. In the demo, the SMG has a maximum shot count of 8 per round, which means two 4-shot bursts.

Basically a survivor does the following when they shoot:

1) Looks at the targets they can shoot at, picks the best one
2) Fires a number of shots based on their experience level. In this case, that's 4 shots
3) Goes back to step 1, and adjusts their aim as necessary

So, in this process, it may look like a survivor is shooting at another survivor, but what's probably happened is one of two things:

1) The shots went astray or missed their intended target
2) The first couple of shots of the burst killed the zombie and the rest carried on to hit the survivor. In this case the next burst will be aimed at a proper target.

Survivors will always stop shooting if they have no legal targets. This includes their line of fire being blocked by a survivor, or all their current targets being dead.

Will have a look at the other issues you mentioned (aiming behaviour, names, etc).

Again, I appreciate the comments.

[Voideka]

I was kidding about the intentional FF there, it just happens a lot.

When clicking to set modes, nothing happens if you click on the gray area.

A blocked LOS message would be good too.

[LoganB]

Am in strong agreement with you about the LOS selection stuff in general. I'm working now to make it a lot more consistent.